As part of the European Commission’s high-level event with stakeholders to mark the second anniversary of the REPowerEU strategy, the European Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, announced on Tuesday 14 May that the procedure for selecting the service provider for the pilot project on a market mechanism for hydrogen (see EUROPE 13389/11) would be launched by the end of the month.
“This is a follow-up to what Parliament and the EU Council agreed in the package on decarbonising the gas market, and it is a further step forward for our hydrogen programme”, she said.
This pilot project is modelled on AggregateEU, the joint gas purchasing platform, for which the external service provider PRISMA is responsible for matching aggregation with gas demand (see EUROPE 13360/21). The selection of a hydrogen service provider is therefore the first stage in this pilot project, which is also intended to be voluntary.
The Commissioner also took the opportunity to announce that the Commission would be launching a new call for proposals for 2024 under the renewable energy funding mechanism, to the tune of €53 million.
Speaking to representatives of the renewable energy sector, the Commissioner came to present, as a priority, the EU’s achievements over the last two years to ensure its energy security and sovereignty.
“Since the launch of the strategy, we have seen an unprecedented increase in renewable energy, with over 130 GW of new renewable energy capacity deployed. If we take into account gas savings, this represents around 24 billion m3”, she enthused.
With a view to continuing its efforts, the Commission unveiled a series of new recommendations and guidelines on 13 May (see EUROPE 13408/16), aimed in particular at speeding up the procedures for granting renewable energy permits, improving the design of auctions and facilitating the designation of acceleration zones for renewable energies. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)